Blitz Tackles Growing Cannabis Insurance Market with Verisk Solutions

InsurTech startup Blitz is leveraging powerful underwriting insights, automated rating updates, and enhanced policy language from Verisk, a leading global data analytics provider, to help cannabis and other specialty businesses more easily obtain insurance. Blitz, which insures cannabis and other hard-to-place or underserved, small-to-medium sized businesses, is implementing a variety of Verisk solutions to help boost efficiency and support profitable growth.

“We believe there’s a faster, simpler, and smarter way to get specialty coverage and serve more customers,” said Cliff Karlin, president of insurance, Blitz. “Verisk’s solutions will help us integrate new rating content, shorten submission forms, and accelerate quote generation and policy issuance.”

Blitz is using several Verisk solutions, including:

• LightSpeed^® Small Commercial: With just a business name and address, Blitz is able to integrate data and analytics from Verisk’s LightSpeed into a simple, end-to-end insurance platform for brokers. LightSpeed delivers timely and actionable insights based on robust business firmographics, property details, and management information, as well as large volumes of unstructured data analyzed with artificial intelligence and machine learning.
• ISO Electronic Rating Content^TM (ERC^TM): To help keep its rating system current with updated ISO loss costs, rules, and coverages, Blitz is using the new cloud-based version of ISO ERC. This next-generation solution is accessible via smart APIs and is significantly easier for insurers to use, integrate and test.
• ISO Insurance Programs: To help develop its products, Blitz has leveraged the ISO Commercial Property and General Liability Programs which have been enhanced with a wide range of cannabis-related coverage options. These programs also include 10 new hemp and cannabis-specific classifications for General Liability and 11 for Commercial Property.

“Blitz is demonstrating how an efficient, digital-first strategy, centered on excellent agent and customer experiences, can disrupt the market for specialty businesses,” said Neil Spector, president of underwriting solutions at Verisk. “Using advanced analytics, automation, and policy language developed by insurance experts, Verisk can help insurers like Blitz radically transform workflows to help agents more confidently—and quickly—write new business.”